"She refused to accept balls from me": What it's like to be a ball kid at the Australian Open.

Each year, tennis tournaments like the Australian Open bring up countless questions, such as:

Are the grunts necessary?

May I marry Roger Federer… please?

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But perhaps most curiously: What’s the deal with the ball boys/girls?

Who are they? What do they do? What are their secrets?

On Saturday, ball kids were brought front and centre when French player Elliot Benchetrit asked a ball girl to peel his banana. Like… literally.

The girl offered him a banana, which yes, he liked very much, but then he asked her to peel it.

Sir.

The umpire then told him to peel it himself and so true.

Then, on Thursday, a ball kid received a sweet gesture from Rafael Nadal after one of his powerful forehands hit her. After a wide shot from the tennis star stuck her face, Nadal quickly approached the young girl and gave her a peck on the cheek. During the next point, when she was in action, the Melbourne crowd gave her a huge cheer.

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What’s the selection criteria?

Jake was 11 when he was a ball boy, and he remembers some of the others being as old as 15, but there weren’t any below 10. He assumes this is the rough age bracket required to be ball kid.

In terms of what it took to be chosen, he says “we had to roll balls around a court for the whole day.”

“You didn’t need to be particularly fit,” he explained. “We only did 40 minute stints at a time on the court,” so the major factor was whether you could withstand the heat.

It sounds like this might have changed in the years since - especially for the Australian Open.

The ball kids this year reportedly underwent a 12 month, rigorous selection process, and months of training, with an international contingent joining the successful Australian applicants. Although, the selection process sounds fairly similar to what Jake described.

“You didn’t need to be particularly fit.” (Image: Getty)

Matt Buckeridge, a 14-year-old ball kid from Victoria, told The New Daily the three-round process involves supervisors “looking at things like rolling, throwing and our court movement and speed.”

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The Australian Open says the international kids undertake a selection trial weekend, involving on-court drills and written tests.

Did anyone ever lose their cool at you?

One well-known Australian tennis player “lost it” at Jake at the Adidas International.

“She ran into me when she was trying to get a ball close to the net,” he said.

“I wasn’t in the wrong, but she was pretty pissed off.”

Another Russian female tennis player had a very specific problem with Jake.

“She refused to accept balls from me,” he explained. “I think it was an obsessive compulsive thing - so I had to constantly give them to the other ball boys to give to her.”